A typical application of rectifiers is the field of wireless inductive power transmission. Generally, wireless inductive power transmission has several advantages over cable connected systems. Due to technological advancements, wireless inductive power transmission to mobile batteries gains increasing attention and the trend is driven by automotive, consumer, and industrial applications.
Generally, wireless inductive power transmission divides into a primary stationary side and a secondary mobile side. The primary stationary side has a switched mode electronic circuitry and a resonant circuitry consisting of capacitors and a transmission coil.
FIG. 23 shows a schematic diagram of a secondary side in an inductive power transfer system known in the art.
As shown in FIG. 23, at the secondary mobile side, a voltage and a current are induced at a receiving coil forming part of a resonant circuit. A passive or an active rectifier feeds power directly to a battery, accumulator or to a mobile energy system which consists of several loads, e.g., DC/DC converters and energy storage devices such as batteries, accumulators, capacitors, condensers, supercapacitors, ultra-capacitors, etc.
As shown in FIG. 23, the secondary receiving side of a wireless inductive power transfer system comprises an energy storage device E1, E2 or load. Usually there are several voltage levels used at the receiving side. However, if two energy storage devices E1, E2 or loads are to be supplied with power in parallel, at least one DC/DC converter is needed to decouple the first energy storage device E1 or load from the second energy storage device E2 or load.
However, this implies extra circuitry leading to higher costs, weight, and circuit complexity at the secondary receiving side. Additionally, losses in DC/DC conversion lead to decreased system efficiency.